How stripped down can linux get?

[Flagg]

I have come into possesion of an old P2-233 PC. I am thinking about using Linux for an OS and am curious how stripped down you can make the kernel/OS. I would want it to boot as fast (as fast as an old P1 can boot) as possbile and boot to window manager. Also which window manager is the faster?

[RancidWAnnaRIot]

i don't know.. but i do know that linux was made so that it can work with old hardware.. so maybe it would still boot pretty fast with a not stripped down linux

[Tawnos]

how stripped down can it get? well, very, but if you want a window manager you're, by nature, not stripping down. I think xfce or blackbox are the preferred "low-budget" window managers... can't say for sure though, sorry hehe

[Walleye]

something called root linux is supposed to be the MOST stripped down you can get. you have to install everything. it's like half a megabyte from disk.

[deuce868]

I installed a debian installation in under 200mb. That is not running a gui though. Just look into lightweight WM and see which one runs best.

[ameoba]

Should be able to get something in there no problem; I wouldn't run Gentoo on it tho...


Stay away from KDE/GNOME and you should, for the most part, be fine. I'd probably go with Firefox instead of Mozilla as the browser as well.


Really, in this case, the limiting resource is RAM; how much you got?

[Nybbles]

You can definately do it, but it's not going to be pretty and flashy, Whatever you do, stay away from KDE and Gnome. A few years ago, I was running Linux on a Pentium 133 using Blackbox. Worked great,

Wish I could recommend a distro for ya, but I havent tried what you're doing in a few years. Back when I was doing it, I was running Mandrake, started wirth 6 then 7.

[Flagg]

I have some experience with Gentoo, Redhat, and Fedora and to be honest I have wanted an excuse to try debian for a while so maybe I will use that. As for ram I am not %100 sure, but its probably 64mb maybe 128 if im lucky. I have a bunch of old SIMMS laying around so whatever current ram is in the machine I will max it out with my spares.

[Mushroom Prince]

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/


I would try that, I don't know much about linux and so I assume that you do.

[Flagg]

Well that official stats are a K6-2/333 w/ 32mb ram. So i have a little more processing power that originally thought.

[cv643d]

just run TWM as you window manager.

[Silent1]

yeah grab debian and you can use fluxbox as a window manager.

[BillLeeLee]

Vector Linux (http://www.vectorlinux.com/) could be a good distro. It's based on Slackware and was designed for older and lower end systems.

For a window manager, if you want something really lean, two of the most lightweight I know are the default TWM and Rat Poison (ratpoison.sf.net).

For something a little better to look at, try Openbox 3 (http://icculus.org/openbox/). It's lightweight, based on blackbox, and doesn't even have it's own taskbar. I use it now as my main WM, though fluxbox was my previous wm of choice.

[zerogt86]

fluxbox would fit the bill

[bongoloid]

I've installed DSL, Damn Small Linux (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/) on a P1-233 box. It does well, even using a window manager (blackbox, for example). You can download a live-CD of it (only 50+/- Megs!), try it, and install it to your hard drive if you like it. It can also be installed on a USB stick, but I haven't tried that yet...

[ameoba]

just run TWM as you window manager

Actually, TWM isn't all that lightweight; FVWM is smaller & a lot more featureful. I think the *boxen can give it a run for its money.

Doesn't stop me from using TWM on my work machine (it really tweaks ppl out to see TWM running on a dual-head 2500+)

[cv643d]

How is FVWM smaller? Memory wise?

[ameoba]

Yes. For what little it does, TWM is very resource hungry.

[Flagg]

Well I got fedora loaded, (a little bloated but i can always uninstall) stripped down the services I don't need and loaded IceWM instead of the gnome or kde. So far its works pretty well. Another question I had is regarding the kernel. I want to strip it down to the bare bones as well, are there any guide available that help in this task?

[Mushroom Prince]

I've installed DSL, Damn Small Linux (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/) on a P1-233 box. It does well, even using a window manager (blackbox, for example). You can download a live-CD of it (only 50+/- Megs!), try it, and install it to your hard drive if you like it. It can also be installed on a USB stick, but I haven't tried that yet...

do you have any screens of dam small linux ?

[cv643d]

I tried FVWM but somehow I like TWM better. It would be cool if TWM had close buttons for images so you dont need to kill every window you want to close.

[NewBlackDak]

try fluxbox. Lots better, and leightweight.

Google for Linux kernel compiling for the other.

[bongoloid]

do you have any screens of dam small linux ?

Many are on their website. Just scroll down a bit on the home page. Most current screen is v 0.6.3 and they are on version 0.7.1

But hey it's linux and don't they all look pretty similar? I mean, a fluxbox screen is a fluxbox screen, right? You can put pretty pictures in the background and change the theme to any fluxbox theme, AFAIK

[sandmanx]

Well I got fedora loaded, (a little bloated but i can always uninstall) stripped down the services I don't need and loaded IceWM instead of the gnome or kde. So far its works pretty well. Another question I had is regarding the kernel. I want to strip it down to the bare bones as well, are there any guide available that help in this task?

Just do a make xconfig while in X on the kernel and it does a pretty good job of explaining everything. I haven't really optimized a recent kernel, so I can't really tell you what to expect on size. Go with the 2.4.xx kernel tree if you don't need the 2.6.xx features, since it's smaller.